Could you try borrowing a pair of speaker cables from your dealer and try bi-amping?
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No and I am not believe in this kind of changments
These Naim one box items are best left as the manufacturer intended; without adding power amps and other means to try and improve them. They are what they are.
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I think ābeliefā is misplaced here ā thatā s church business. In Hifi, it is often trial and error, since both belief and theory are wrong too oftenā¦
I agree, thatās the only chance for a significant difference. No guarantees but Iād not expect the NAP100 to be a significant upgrade alone.
I find my UQ2 on itās own with my speakers adequate without considering a poweramp.
Why do the Add a pre out then??
So they can upsell to you of course.
Flexibility. Maybe you go for a mullet with $20k speakers and need a 409w power amp. Reasons are endless. Just because you can, doesnāt mean you should. It all depends on your speakers and upgrade strategy.
Flexibility, I guess (as FZ has already said above) or if your speakers demand a better power amp than the Unitiquteās one. To be fair the NAP 100 wasnāt promoted by Naim as an upgrade to the Unitiqute, but as partner to the DAC V1.
Agreed, I think the Unitis are tremendous on their own. As outlined earlier in the thread, I had a demo of the 100 and 250. Marginal improvement with the 250, pretty much negligible with the 100 (with my efficient speakers). Unless speakers are a hefty load (ATC for etc) then adding a power amp to a UQ2 is best considered a convenient intro to a Pre / Power system.
Joris, give it a few days and then perhaps go back to the UQ in isolation and then see how that sounds compared to the UQ + 100. Sometimes, when you take a step back you can hear what the āupgradeā has been contributing all along and then may miss what the NAP100 has added.
Either way, at least with Naimās healthy secondhand values, you should be able to sell on again for minimal loss.
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Actually the NAP100 was listed by Naim in the UnitiQute 2 upgrade path.
I stand corrected.
You are correct in that the Qute was promoted as partnering the DAC V1 and the Unitiserve as a system.
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I think the things you are so dismissive of do work and there are plenty of satisfied customers (myself included) , the problem you have is that you have moved sideways not significantly upwards.
I would have said a NAP 200 and you would have heard the difference - significantly. The NAP 100 was always designed to be attached to a DAC V1 .
I would have figured it would have been a very good amp, in a second system or a modest lifestyle system , not for driving big speakers in a big room
My speakers are quite small, Epos ES-11
I understand, what you are saying, having been on this forum for some time I have read the same comment that you are making sometimes gets made about the Atom/NAP 100 that it really isnāt an upgrade , but the NAP200 is. I canāt speak for Linn.
Many, many years ago my dealer (and I still have him ) sat me down when I wanted to go on the upgrade path from a Naim Nait, first he demonstrated adding a power supply then removing that and adding a fact cap and showing me the upgrade path. Power supply first then the power amp, all in recognisable and discernible steps
I think what has happened here, is that you bought it second hand and if you had heard it in a dealer you wouldnāt have bought it.
The same dealer (and I canāt remember why) once told me when I enquired that the path I was exploring was not one that they would sell me, I think he wouldnāt have sold you the NAP 100 .
I have seen comments about bi-amping that the NAP 100 drives one set of inputs and the UnitiQute drives the other, how you would do this and whether it would work is totally beyond me
Exactly you can not even bi-amp
Maybe mij Epos speakers are to simple to hear the differenceā¦
Since you bought second-hand from a dealer, why didnāt you demo the NAP100? I understand that dealers in some countries donāt allow home demos, but you could have taken the your little UQ and your small speakers to the dealerās shop. Easy peasy lemon squeezy ā this would have save you some frustration and blasting hereā¦
Anyway, back to music. Enjoying here my mobile/travel system ā Chord Hugo 2 and Sennheiser HD800s, which I demoāed before buyingā¦
I did not buy it at a dealer
I found this on the internet, I wonder how iT Works
Cute with a Qute
Being the happy owner of a Naim UnitiQute in my study I was most interested to hear what the increase in power and performance from the NAP 100 could bring compared to the amp inside the Qute. But when it became apparent that both amps had the same sensitivity I realised that I could use the NAP 100 to bi-amp the system. Tweeters on the Qute, woofers on the NAP. The set-up is straightforward, the UnitiQute runs on my network with a Synology NAS, connected with Cat7+ cable. Single or double Supra loudspeaker cables run to my PMC Twenty.23 speakers. Power cords are home made from decent wire but nothing special.
First I swapped the speaker cables from the Qute to the NAP 100, at this stage I didnāt switch the internal power amp in the Qute to the āno speakersā position. The music I played came, among others, from Kari Bremnes whose CD Norwegian Mood provided the track The Copenhagen Cavern, afterwards I played the track Here Comes The Flood from Katja Maria Werkerās CD Mitten Im Sturm. With both tracks the results were clear: a better stereo image with the voice standing out from the musicians to a greater degree. There was also more and deeper low end both in quality and quantity. The music became more convincing and had more āairā.
As soon as I switched the internal power amplifier of the UnitiQute to the āno speakersā position in the menu a darkness in the sound disappeared and the character of the Qute changed to the sunny side of music reproduction. Naimās classic pace, rhythm and timing made its appearance, percussion had more attack and the sound got more involving. While the bass lines became clearer and easier to follow individually. With the power supply in the UnitiQute dedicated to the digital and preamp sections it is clear how much influence the power section has on the end result. No wonder Naim has so many power supply upgrades in its range.
The final step was to see what would happen if I bi-amped my small PMC system. New music was played, this time Marc Cohn with Walking In Memphis and Melody Gardot singing If The Stars Were Mine. I went back to the UnitiQute first which plays very well on its own, but it is clear that switching off the NAP 100 is a step backwards into darkness, a less pretty low end combined with less detail overall. You notice it as soon as you connect or disconnect a better power amplifier, although I am sure in the beginning Naim never meant to use a UnitiQute this way. I added the NAP 100 and connected it to the woofers, leaving the Qute to fire up the tweeters. This meant I had to switch the internal power amp on again and unfortunately this gets us back into the situation where its influence limits the capacities of the standalone NAP 100. It is a far better solution to just connect the NAP 100 to my speakers and when I changed from a single run of Supra Classic 4.0 cable to Chord Company bi-wire I reached my goal. That was the last time I combined the NAP 100 with the UnitiQute, mostly because the cables added just that little warmth the Supra cable lacks as well as improving speed. For bi-amping I would probably have to buy another NAP 100.
May I ask if you have gone into the Unitiqute settings menu to the loudspeaker section and switched to āno speakersā? This should turn off the Unitiquteās own power amp section.